


Lyrics

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Hiveswap
Genre: Batman - Freeform, Fluff, Gen, I'm so sorry, Love Song, M/M, Subjugglators, Swearing, complicated feelings, headcanons, honestly very ridiculous headcanons, just a little but still more than is in the game, like Trizza has gold-and-velvet caution tape, video game-ish side quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 10:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12769008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Xefros finds a love song Dammek wrote, and is conflicted about what it means.  Also, he and Joey complete a weird side quest and make more Prongle friends.





	Lyrics

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so… Some things:  
> 1\. A wonderful person played “The Last of the Real Ones” by Fall Out Boy for me and asked if it could be a Dammek/Xefros-ish love song. I thought YES but then… It sounded kind of like what Dammek would want to be, not necessarily something Xefros would’ve thought up for him. The song in this story is pretty different than “The Last of the Real Ones” (and definitely in general not as good, heh!), but they share some similar elements. Just... So you know, I guess.  
> 2\. Maybe Joey doesn’t like Batman. Ahhh… I just really like Batman and it felt relevant??? Joker/Batman is my favorite hatemance… And since Terezi didn’t know about Two-Face’s coin, it occurs to me maybe trolls don’t have Gotham stuff in general? Heh. It’s a stretch, I know.  
> Have a great day!! Thanks for reading.

Xefros Tritoh hadn’t meant to go prying around in Dammek’s stuff, at least not at first.  The lyrics had actually fallen out of that big book of lusus anatomy Joey had borrowed from his hive, and then he just…  Read them.  It wasn’t even until a little while later, after he and Joey got finished with what she was calling one of their “side quests.”  Xefros had just gathered the scattered papers up, at the time, laughing shakily and stuffing everything except what they needed into his pockets.  They were in front of a highblood’s hive, at the time, with the highblood in question looking the pair of them over with eyes almost all the way filled up with blue and lips painted silver like they were made of metal. That might have contributed to all the shakiness, just a bit.  If Xefros were still keeping up with his butler practice, he would have probably tried to fix the papers somehow.  Iron them, or something.  Whatever his textbooks said.     

Maybe he shouldn’t have read the lyrics at all.  By the time he got through them Xefros had known they weren’t finished.  Dammek didn’t usually second-guess the additions he made to their Grubbles/Grubbels songs – generally he just swept in and added some more of his restless anger, or else came up with new, creative insults for Xefros to sing at the Heiress.  But these lyrics were full of edited spelling errors, full of lines crossed out and replaced by something else.  They’d ended with  _“this is shit!!!”_ written in a faster, angrier handwriting more like Dammek usually used.  Not questioning himself, anymore.  That was probably why Dammek had ripped the paper out of his notebook and hidden it away.  But he hadn’t thrown it out, no.  Maybe he’d been planning to try again later.

So, by the time it was already done Xefros knew he probably shouldn’t have read the lyrics.  It was just that his moirail was a world away, hopefully not messily dead or captured by whatever humans had ruling over them instead of a glittery fish Heiress. 

And, you know, that particular lyrics page had started out with his own name, “Xefros,” all huge jagged print with doodles next to it.  A broken trident, their band logo, an imperial drone sliced in two and bleeding scribbles out over the paper…  But there, mixed in with everything else and plain as day, “Xefros.”  Like it was a letter addressed to him, meant to be stumbled across when Dammek was gone and he really needed it.  Or maybe like it had been the song title? 

 Either way, Xefros had folded the rest of the papers up neatly and slipped them back into the book about lusus anatomy, which Joey had thought was funny since they were probably going to fall out again anyway.  He kept the lyrics in his pocket, though, stuffed down deep like a secret.

What happened was, Xefros and Joey had had to sneak through an Alternian amusement park, which meant clowns and their chucklevoodoos, their blood-battered juggling pins and capricious twofold gods.  It also meant a shortcut that would allow them to make their next connection on time.  He’d been holding on to her wrist and weaving carefully through the crowds until they came to a bunch of stupidly expensive gold and velvet “caution” tape.  The Heiress’s. 

They were already cutting it really close, though, and there weren’t any imperial battleships in the air.  Probably the tape meant something had happened there, or was going to happen, and not that the Heiress was making terrible quips in the amusement park right at that very moment.  Joey had slipped a squishy human finger over her lips, then, and it had become her turn to lead the way.  They ducked under caution tape that was honestly more like fancy jewelry for a giant lusus and slipped past some more patrolling drone guards and kept on going.

The “just keep your head down and  _go_ ” plan worked out okay for them for a while – Xefros had even made a joke about whether Joey wanted to go see if they could get the taped-off rollercoaster working, and Joey tried not to pull grossed-out faces at the food stands.  She could laugh about Alternian ice cream by that point, but her smile had been so wobbly when Xefros had gotten her one of his favorite kinds at a street corner outfit.  That had been before he knew much about Joey, or earth, or what ice cream would be like without crushed beetles or whatever to give it texture. 

He’d just wanted to cheer his new alien friend up, but for a second he’d been afraid she might cry.  Overwhelmed by the alien-ness of it all, by the friendly dessert food staring at her with tiny eyes of its very own and the fake horns on her head.  He’d offered to pick out all the bug parts and she’d told him it was okay, voice helpless and human eyes reflecting the dreamlike, humming neon of that city in a way troll eyes never could.  A silent video of the Heiress sashaying around and striking poses had been playing on the skyscraper screens all above them.

They’d made it most of the way through the amusement park by the time the clown with light-up shoes and a weaponized rubber chicken hanging from his belt straps caught them.  He didn’t speak up, catching Joey and Xefros in forbidden zones the Heiress had cut off, but he  _did_  follow them a little ways and try to strike a deal.  His kismesis, he’d said, had disappeared from Prongle, and he wasn’t allowed to leave the caution tape zone until the Heiress finished staging her latest meme performance inside it…  He was either one of the actors or someone meant to hold a camera from a specific angle, he wasn’t sure yet.  Or maybe he was only around to beat people up and/or cull them if the Heiress didn’t like the way they laughed at her hilarious stunts.  Whichever way.  She was either going to show up in a couple nights or a while later, depending on when she was free.  He wasn’t sure about that part, either.

It sounded like an inconvenient and weird experience, sure.   There’d been a bunch of people in that part of the park when the Heiress decided,  _“Hey, you know what would be a good place for a funny picture after I burn down some subgrubs?  This.  This right here.”_ and then none of them could leave. Definitely not  _as_  inconvenient as having your neighborhood set on fire so the Heiress could take a selfie, but she was pulling her crap all over Alternia just like Dammek said.  The trolls in the amusement park had to run out of bottled sugar water and stuff to eat eventually.

But if Joey and Xefros could deliver a message to the clown guy’s kismesis – namely a letter saying he’d hate them forever and they really should turn on their Messiahs-damned tablet and get on stupid Prongle – then he wouldn’t get any other Subjugglators and/or imperial drones sent after them, yet.  Okay?   

“Okay,” Joey had said.  She also told Xefros she understood the idea of hatemance a little better after talking to that clown, seeing how worried he’d looked even while he physically couldn’t seem to stop sneering and slipping in pet insults whenever he talked about his missing kismesis.  He’d said he would never use chucklevoodoos to mess with this person’s head, even, because they’d hate that in an actually _bad_ way.  Maybe it was “hate,” but it was a “Joker-obsessed-with-Batman” kind of hate where nobody ended up dead and it was possible one of the parties only wanted the other person to be obsessed with them, too.  

A lot of earth media crossed over pretty well with Alternian stuff, but Xefros had never heard of those guys, Batman and his clown-ish frenemy.  Joey said she’d explain that later, when their lives involved a little less running.        

It was probably a given that most adventures would involve side quests, honestly.  Joey played a lot more video games than Xefros did, and she said that was usually the way of things.  Although the side quests weren’t always to satisfy bossy highblood-types who would murder you otherwise – which was  _awful_ , Joey insisted, even if the highbloods in question had been raised to think it was okay.  

The two of them had to hurry over to the clown’s kismesis’s hive on the way to their meet-up, then, or else apparently they’d have ended up getting chased.  Joey had tucked the letter into Dammek’s book of lusus anatomy because her inventory was nearly full of random stuff by that point – an alien gadget she’d thought her brother Jude would love, every single battery they came across and a bunch of those cardboard circles she’d brought from earth that still didn’t seem to have a purpose.  Stuff like that.  Xefros’s head felt so heavy after tromping through the amusement park and then this new piece of city; his legs felt like they did after particularly grueling Arena Stickball practices when he had to keep running beverages back and forth for highblood teammates. 

The clown’s kismesis wore too much perfume that smelled like cotton candy, when they finally found them.      

They opened their hive door and looked down expressionlessly.  It took them all of two seconds to equip a weapon, and by that point Joey was stumbling over a lot of words and thumbing through Dammek’s book so fast she dropped it.  Papers went everywhere, and yeah – yeah.  That’s when Xefros first saw his name on one of those pages. 

Dammek may have written about him.  Right there, on that paper getting soggy on a highblood’s porch step.  Those could have been the only words he’d get from his moirail for a long time, possibly forever. 

(Hopefully not forever.)

“So, are you happy to get your letter?  Can we…  Can we go now?” Joey asked, after Xefros successfully handed over the envelope covered in gory stickers – like, of somebody’s organs tied to a balloon, you know.  Subjugglator stuff like that.  He’d passed her back the book, too, and she’d shot him a look like,  _Why are you so upset?_

 __Joey always, always seemed to care when something was wrong.  It flattered Xefros, in a way, but left him feeling raw and strange at the same time.

 “Oh, yes.  I’m furious,” said the clown’s kismesis with a smooth, sneaky smile that didn’t quite reach their eyes.  “He’s trying to piss me off, refusing to do his job and cull you on sight.  Just to get me a letter.”

Joey shrugged and offered a nervous “ta-da?” sort of pose.  The highblood leaned in to hug her, then, and Xefros held his breath, heart hammering in his throat, until it was really clear no alarm bells were going off about the soft warmth of Joey’s skin.  Joey, for her part, patted the highblood awkwardly on the back.  She gave Xefros a look he’d learned by that point meant “Alternia Is Really Weird, Xefros.”  He just nodded back because, honestly?  Sometimes Alternia really  _was_.

By the time they did what they had to do – which was actually meet their connection, and just at the very, very last second, too – both the reckless clown and his kismesis had asked Joey to be their “frond” on Prongle.  Xefros, for his part, was still thinking about the sheet of paper with his name on it crumpled up in his pocket. 

Dammek didn’t usually give gifts.  Receiving the autotune mic had been a big enough deal Xefros kept and displayed a photograph of the occasion.  If the paper was for him, Xefros wanted it.  He wanted it so badly it tasted like tears in the back of his throat, and Joey kept asking if he felt okay. 

It wasn’t until a while even after that, when he and Joey were camped out in the back of a Scythian transport vehicle, that things began to get kind of calm again.  Joey told him a little about what earth amusement parks were like based off TV shows she’d seen, and Xefros got around to asking who “Batman” and “the Joker” were again.  They sounded like a really unhealthy kismesis couple after Joey explained it, but it  _did_  sound kind of like the Joker was an unstable Subjugglator with a burning hate crush. 

It turned out the butler character in earth Batman stories, Alfred, wasn’t a complete wuss, too.  That was pretty cool to hear.  He wasn’t relegated to just polishing his highborn charge’s floors and disposing of bodies discreetly – in fact, sometimes Alfred  _was_  “Batman.”  Joey laughed and said it was cute how Xefros lit up imagining the butler as the hero.  The butler as someone a lot of readers really liked, who got in some of the funniest lines.  She ruffled his hair a little and reminded him, again, that it was really stupid he  _had_  to be a butler.  Her feathery not-lusus, Byers the pigeon, cooed softly in the crook of her neck and pecked at her ear a little.  Her eyes were soft and dark, like curtains with all sorts of stuff hidden inside.  A whole show, possibly human “ballet” or something else Xefros would watch with his mouth hanging open.  He hadn’t even had to tell her his real dream – playing competitive Arena Stickball.  Joey had just known. 

In that moment, Xefros had felt like he could tell Joey anything.  So he said, “One of Dammek’s papers that fell out of the lusus book had my name on top.  Am I awful if I read it?”

Joey thought, crinkling up her nose the same way she did when she was trying to decide whether she knew enough about an injured lusus to treat it or if she had to consult Dammek’s book again.  Finally, she said, “If he says something mean about you, I’m going to kick him in the shins.”  She still hadn’t warmed up to Dammek much, even after learning some of the cuter stories about him.  Like how he signed online with strings of keyboard mashing after bickering with the other three Tetrarchs, usually just before telling Xefros he should come over because he needed to interact with someone who’d make sense.  Or how you could usually tell what kind of mood Dammek was in by how far slumped over he was in his computer chair – almost lying down and with his feet propped on the table meant “content,” and sitting up rigid with both sticky, sour-stained boots on the floor meant “freaking out about something.

“I want to hear from him,” Xefros said.  “Aw.  Crap, I don’t know.  Sorry?”

 “No need to be sorry, Xefros. Geez.”

“Okay... Okay, I’m reading it.”

“I would too, I think,” Joey said.  “If I found a letter my Pa hid for me, I’d read it.  Even if I might burn it afterwards, and then tap dance on the ashes.  Depending on what it said.” 

So Xefros took the paper out of his pocket and unfolded it carefully over his bent-up knees; Joey turned back to learning how to make sure a dragon lusus’s severed tail grew back healthy.  

It was a set of lyrics, yeah, with  _“this is shit!!!”_ writtendown underneath them.

Except, Xefros didn’t think the lyrics  _were_  shit.  They were the beginning of something, yeah, and Dammek definitely focused more on writing the actual music for their band than the lyrics.  But once he got a few lines in, he saw it was a love song.  Very clearly a love song.

It was about being alone and misunderstood until someone got close enough to really hear you.  Until someone tried building up your voice.  It was about that amazing someone, the only one of their kind on all Alternia, the only one that felt real. 

Xefros wanted to hand Joey the lyrics, wanted to get her to slide them back in the book with the rest of Dammek’s papers.  Or read them and help him out a little…  Except maybe that would be relying on Joey a little too much?  She was already so close to him he’d begun telling her stories he’d sworn to himself he would never tell anyone else, before. 

Really, he wanted to type up a thousand apologies to Dammek for reading something that wasn’t ready yet.  Before Dammek could yell at him, or anything.  But he didn’t do any of that, not yet.  He read over the lyrics a couple more times, dizzier than he’d been since he was buried in rubble outside his hive while the subgrub burned around him and Joey crawled through a smelly vent.  If Dammek had sent him even one of these lines before he disappeared, he wouldn’t have known what to say. 

That was when a thought crossed Xefros’s mind.  Xefros was the singer for the Grubbles/Grubbels, right?  So, what if _he’d_ been supposed to sing these lyrics?  Maybe Dammek had been imagining how Xefros would feel about him.  Some kind of hero, a savior, a revolutionary kickstart to the soul.  Maybe he’d just liked imagining how a love song would sound in his moirail’s autotune-distorted voice.

It was honestly easier for Xefros to imagine that Dammek had been putting together a love song for himself than that those sweet words could have been for him, truly.  And picturing Dammek trying to sing this thing to him, cheeks flushed bronze, voice coming out too soft and all wrong the way he said it always did…  Ah.  Ahhh.  No.  Xefros almost felt like it wasn’t possible.     

Reading back over the song with that idea in mind, it kind of made sense, too.  The Dammek Joey imagined would probably believe he gave Xefros a voice even while he told him what to say.  The Dammek Xefros had built up for Joey might not have thought it was strange to write a love song for himself, more about everything he wanted to be than anything soft and pale he felt.  Maybe.  Maybe.

Xefros hadn’t realized how often he thought about things Dammek had done that pissed him off until Joey commented on it. 

She’d said, “If 'moirallegiance' is all about trust, it sounds like Dammek’s got some work to do to earn yours back.”

 And Xefros had assured her he trusted Dammek, of course he did, but the thought tugged at him – what if he didn’t, not with everything?  With his life, sure.  With a revolution, with their music, with whatever Dammek outright asked him for.  But he’d thought Dammek would keep on testing him even while he was terrified.  He felt like he knew Dammek wouldn’t give a crap about his stuff, and he just kind of assumed he’d be the same way about when his feelings got raw and stupidly delicate.  Now he couldn’t even believe Dammek, his one and only moirail, would ever want to write him a love song. 

Xefros sat frozen for a moment, unsure what to do.  And then he scrolled around in his inventory for a pen, and flipped Dammek’s lyrics over on his lap.  He thought about how Joey might say it wasn’t actually cute when Dammek wouldn’t eat anything decent unless Xefros cooked it for him and pried him away from his computers all smiley and sweet – how she might say it was dangerous to just follow Dammek around blindly even if they died trying to be like action movie stars.  Xefros had to set his limits.  He had to know when he was hurt, and act on it.  She’d coached him through that, the first couple times she accidentally offended him.  Okay, now tell me what I did.  Wait for me to apologize before you start throwing “sorry”-s at me for getting upset in the first place.  If I don’t understand, I’m not really sorry, and it will hurt us both in the long run. 

And Xefros was going to try all that, probably, just as soon as he got Dammek back.  Just as soon as he could. 

But he still knew he’d have sung these lyrics for Dammek, even if all he’d wanted was to be told he was special, told he was adored.  Honestly, there was something so sad about that – something Xefros could pity.  Maybe Joey wouldn’t get it, but she would let him have his feelings, whatever they were.  They’d traveled long enough together to know that. 

Either way, the paper  _did_  say "Xefros" at the top, like a title.  The handwriting throughout was neat and soft and stranger than Dammek’s usual scrawling.  The song talked about wanting to feel close to people and not knowing how – about wanting to be part of the team but feeling separate all the time.  Xefros thought about the clown at the amusement park, making them watch as he chose some fancy stickers for his kismesis’s envelope.  He imagined Dammek with a similar expression on, almost as serious as he was when he thought about wanting to overthrow the Heiress, trying to choose just the right words for his moirail.  The "Team" could be his Arena Stickball team.  The song could be an apology, in a way, because Dammek confessed he wasn't really sure how to be close to anyone.

Xefros shivered, and looked up at Joey.

 “Was it mean?” Joey asked.

Xefros shook his head and she nodded, satisfied.       

And so he wrote “Dammek” at the top of the other side of that paper, all big and careful.  He doodled little pictures around that name – an Arena Stickball bat and Joey reading, a clumsy Scythian transport vehicle and the helmet he really regretted leaving back at home.  He tried to think about how he would write a love song for someone imperfect, someone he realized he was angry with deep under the surface.  Someone he wanted back despite everything else, and someone whose sticky boots had been propped up on almost every surface of his hive.

When Xefros finished writing about Dammek, Joey was an actual expert on dragon lusus care and he really thought they should talk about Batman again before he started to cry or chickened out and erased everything real. 

She scooted over and said, “Okay, just wait until I tell you about Kite-Man.”


End file.
